Circuit boards find a wide variety of uses in the electrical industry such as for radios, televisions, appliances, and various electrical apparatus. A widely employed technique for preparing circuit boards is to impregnate a woven fiberglass with a resin composition and then laminate a copper sheet to one or both sides of the resin impregnated fiberglass sheet. Next, an electrical circuit is etched into the copper to form the circuit board and then electrical connections can be soldered to the board when it is used.
Various resins have been suggested for the purpose of impregnating the fiberglass to prepare the circuit boards. For instance, polyimide resins have been used for such purpose. The use of the-polyimide resins provides good quality circuit boards which possess high resistance to elevated temperatures, low thermal expansion, and good electrical properties including high electrical resistivity. However, circuit boards prepared from polyimide resins are relatively expensive when compared to circuit boards prepared from epoxy resin impregnated fiberglass sheets.
Circuit boards of epoxy resin impregnated fiberglass sheets, although much less expensive than those prepared using polyimide resins, are not especially resistant to high temperatures, have reduced electrical properties and higher thermal expansion when compared to circuit boards of polyimide resin impregnated fiberglass sheets. In addition, other types of resin systems have been suggested for this purpose. For instance, a combination of certain epoxy resins and certain specific bismaleimide materials are suggested in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,294,877 and 4,294,743.
Moreover, bismaleimide triazine polymeric materials have been suggested as a possible binder or matrix material for printed circuit boards. However, such materials do not form a stable solution in various low boiling point solvents. It is desirable to use low boiling solvents to assist in the rapid application of the resin when attempting to employ such for the purposes of preparing printed circuit boards. One suggestion to prevent such resins from coming out of the solution is to include a solvent such as dimethyl formamide or N-methyl pyrrolidone. Along these lines, see page 11 of High Heat Resistant Polymide Resin BT Resin Bismaleimide Triazine (the third edition), Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Company, Inc.
More recently, compositions suitable for making circuit boards containing a bismaleimide triazine polymer, a brominated epoxy, and a solvent have been described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,456,712 to Christie et al.
Resin compositions, when cured, should desirably exhibit a relatively high glass transition temperature and possess high resistance to elevated temperatures. Accordingly, compositions to be suitable as the matrix material for integrated circuit boards must possess a number of diverse characteristics including relatively high glass transition temperature when cured, solubility and stability in low boiling point solvents, adhesion to the fiberglass sheets, low thermal expansion, and high electrical resistivity.